As I wandered through the College Hill Arts Festival this year there was one constant that could not be ignored. It wasn't the art, or the weather, or the crowds of people. Almost every artist there had gray hair. Most all the patrons had gray hair

I attended a classical music concert on campus. The only people there without gray hair were the hired ushers. This is at a university in which the average age of students is about 20

Occasionally, I'm invited to talk to various organizations. Almost all the people at these functions are older. The average Rotarian is now about 58. At many veteran organizations, the honor guards and the groups who volunteer to help at funerals are averaging 70 years of age.

I have an older brother who is a good engineer. He tried to retire some time ago, but keeps getting called back to do work because his employer cannot find qualified younger workers with the proper skills. This would be no problem if the work could just be sent off to anther country, but in this case, that is a problem. He works for the Defense Department in a building with no address.

Where are the young people?

The answer to that question is both demographic and sociological and holds tremendous implications for the future of our culture and the world.

There has been a profound demographic shift. Population graphs have always looked like pyramids. There have been lots of young people and fewer and fewer people as age increases.

When government retirement pensions were originally introduced by Kaiser Wilhelm over a hundred years ago, they were offered at age 65 primarily because the average life expectancy was only about 58. In the United States, only 50 percent of children born in 1900 could hope to reach the age of 50.

The population graph now is starting to look like an apartment building (i.e., a rectangle) rather than a pyramid. There are fewer babies being born and people are living longer.

It is estimated, and these figures are very firm because the people have already been born, that within less than 20 years, there will be more than 71 million people in the U.S. over 65. That is larger than the entire population of France. It is equal to the population of Greece, Canada, Australia, and Austria combined.

Western governments have been playing a Ponzo scheme with their welfare programs based on the shape of the population pyramid. They could create all kinds of wealth transfers to people who were not working, as long as there were large numbers of young people who would work. Four or five workers could take care of each retired person, and would be willing to do so because another generation of younger workers could then take care of them if they were fortunate enough to become old.

In future Western societies, the number of workers per person not working will get dangerously close to one. In other words, a worker will have to take care of himself and his family, and a stranger whom the government has already selected. The government has also guaranteed the income of the stranger, but not the income of the worker or the standard of living of the worker&rsquo's family.

Even leftists who can do math realize that this is not going to work.

The solution is to cut programs and/or import workers from countries that still have children. Countries that still have children are those not overwhelmed by current Western culture. In other words, the socialist democracies, including the United States, can cease being socialist, or they can commit cultural suicide.

The Left has associated culture with racism, so they will commit suicide rather than face a reality not held within their parameters of political correctness.

Maybe a society could maintain its culture by enculturating the new workers? No.

A relatively benign socialism is a Western invention. European nations and the United States could not be both a Nanny State and a society in which people have lots of children and older people die in high numbers.

The younger generation, who spend 6 to 10 hours a day isolated in front of one screen or another, may not care as long as they have their phones, circuses, and remain willing to buy into whatever virtual reality is being successfully marketed in any given week.